TL:DR Nothing is gonna change until Valorant's dev team requires some sort of time investement in order to unlock ranked.

I've been lurking around on Reddit, speaking my PoV in comments. Same idea on Valorant's Twitter, Valorant's Discord and even straight to player support. Since nothing seems to move for the better part of 3 months now, I guess I'll have to make a fleshed out thread and actually stick around to maintain it.

I've seen plenty of ideas trying to solve the smurfing issue (right now, it's people throwing games in competitive to tank their MMR. I've also seen it in unrated personally). Thing is, while some of these suggestions are valid (and would work extremely well), they are all undermined by the same thing. There is ABSOLUTELY no negative consequence long term for the guy who is getting caught red handed.

Tank their MMR ? They are rewarded because that's what they are trying to do.

Ban them ? They'll just create another account and be back into competitive 10 wins later (7.5h)

You would need to tie these punishement to their main account. But they are still able to do it if they just use another computer to throw (or a VM). So instead of trying to play cat and mouse with the griefers... Why not use the system that somewhat worked for over a decade that is implemented in League of Legends? Make players work in order to unlock competitive.

The Solution

Ask for every account in the game to have at least 8+ agents unlocked in order to be able to play competitive. This way they'll have to play a large amount of games (securing their MMR in the process) and they'll actually feel terrible about getting banned if they are caught throwing games over and over again.

Also, people selling accounts would also see their efforts undermined because, while buying a third party account is risky, you could simply pay directly Riot to advance the battlepasses in order the unlock the agents (ideally you'd still want the 10 wins minimum so you still have an idea of the player's MMR). So Riot would make a buck from that also. Everyone would win in that situation.

Concerns from such a system

Wouldn't new players be penalized if they want to play with their friends in competitive?

First, why would new players jump straight into competitive? They should learn to play the game properly before jumping into a mode that requires them to try their hardest. Second, unrated. You can still play with your friend and teach them everything without making other players on you team rage at the new player that is just trying to learn his way around.

What happens if I just want an alt account in order to practice new characters without ruining the competitive experience of others ?

First let me give you a medal because you actually care about others. Second, unrated should probably be the place where you should practice new characters, but I understand that not everyone will take it as seriously. Having an alternate account is still available to you with this system, but you'll either need to work your way through a few battlepasses level or you dumping a bit of money into that secondary account.

Wouldn't people that actually want to grief/smurf/boost others still be able to do so by just dumping money in the game ?

Yes, but no system will ever be perfect. At least those griefers will have to dump around 30$ everytime they get caught. Pair that with a retroactive rank adjustement on people who get banned, just how CS:GO does it, and then the system is pretty hard to break.

The "Alt accounts are not influencing anyone" excuse

This excuse has been carried from Riot for a long time. Saying smurfs are being handled quickly as the system recognizes them quickly as such and boosts their ranking swiftly.

Fellow user luishacm has exposed how bogus this excuse is in his thread. In his thread he explained that he wanted an alt account to play when he's not up to stuff while still trying has hard as he can. From the start of his account he busted 400 econ score every game in unrated (getting a straight 10 wins). He did his 5 placements game, still 5 straight wins and only placed Gold while his main is Immortal 3.

I won't go into much more details and will insist that you go check his pretty detailed thread that I don't really want to summarize much more.

A More Radical Solution

Some comments have pointed to a much more radical solution. Force people into 2 factor authentication in order to play competitive.

Personally, I'd be a 100% down with this idea. But, the downfall of this idea comes when you consider that some person don't necessarily have a landline or a cellphone. I fully understand that it is farfetched considering that you have internet, but this is something that has been voiced as a consideration in the past and will probably be the reason Riot gives us for not implementing such a system.

Post Scriptum

As I said, I'll try to stay active on here. I'll add concerns in the main thread over time with the comments (if they are worth mentioning).

I honestly hope that Riot will respond to this thread at some point. This is a growing problem and the "solutions" that have been given don't even feel like solutions. Asking people to win 10 matches in unrated at least cured the problem of throwers / auto surrenders in unrated. So people are a lot more fun to play with in unrated now. But this should not be the end of the efforts especially since the climate in competitive is worse than ever.

Also, to anyone who says : "Lul, just git gud and you'll climb !" The point here is not that I'm complaining about not being able to rank up, the point is that I'm not having fun playing competitive anymore. Rank me iron 1, I wouldn't mind. As long as everyone in there is around my skill level and are all actually trying to communicate and play the game properly. (which is definitely not the case right now whichever rank I'm at)